One Last Winter of War

Prologue

The narrator waits by the river for Harry Redfern, pinning her whole future on his promised proposal and the wedding they mean to plan together. Her mother, Emma Linton, wants to prepare her for separation, so on the narrator's sixteenth birthday she reveals she is dying of consumption and must go away, and that confession means she loses her home and ends up in tears. Emma sends her to the unknown Redfern cousins at Brockmere because she cannot afford to keep her, and the narrator has no choice but to give in. She gradually learns to be happy there and falls in love with Harry, the Redfern son and heir. Harry wants her as his lover and future wife, so he returns her love and plans to speak to his father after the fete, turning her from dependent cousin into secret lover. She now anticipates that evening proposal and believes Lady Selina will eventually agree, despite Lady Selina's other plans for her son.

Chapter 1

Kate slips into the boathouse wanting only rest, the quiet of the water and the dark after everything the evening has demanded of her. The stillness does not last. Harry arrives, and the shock of him there startles her before want takes over. He lifts her from the boat and kisses her, and the moment turns heated fast. Harry wants her, plainly and without pretense, and Kate is carried along by it until Prue's voice cuts through the boathouse and stops everything cold.

Prue stands in the doorway having followed them, and her purpose is single: to stop Harry and Kate before they go further. The interruption lands like a bucket of water. Then Prue does something far worse than intrude. She tells Harry that Kate is their half-sister.

The claim detonates the room. Harry refuses it outright, certain Prue is lying, and throws the accusation back at her as jealousy, the resentment of a woman who cannot stand to see him want someone else. Prue does not back down. She says she read Kate's mother's letter, and that detail lands hard. Harry turns on her, threatening her, pressing until Prue breaks and flees rather than face him. But the damage is done.

Kate goes after her, catching Prue before she can run, and demands to know why she hid the truth, why she sat on something this enormous instead of speaking it. The confrontation gives Kate nothing to hold onto. Her mother's silence. The letter. All of it points to one unbearable possibility: that what just happened between her and Harry was incest. The realization crashes down on her in the dark by the water.

Harry cannot accept it. His love for Kate does not switch off on command. That is the cruelty of it. The feeling is still there, and now it is poisoned. Kate, meanwhile, is left turning over her mother's silence, trying to understand why she was never told, and grieving not just the moment but the entire future with Harry that has just been erased. The loss is total, and it is fresh.

Harry's response is to go on the attack. He orders Kate to her room and turns toward confronting Sir Gerald, determined to get the truth from the source. Kate refuses to be sent away. She wants to hear it herself, insists on being included, will not be protected out of the room while the men sort out what her life is. But Harry overrides her. His will wins. Kate is left behind to wait alone, shut out of the conversation that will decide everything, the truth still hanging unresolved and Sir Gerald still to be faced.

Chapter 2

Kate waits for Harry after their night together, desperate for reassurance that the world has not shattered. When he finally returns, his face is deathlike, and her hope collapses before he speaks. He confirms the truth she has been dreading: the incest is real. He tells her Sir Gerald confessed it, and with that, he destroys the last of Kate's hope.

Harry then turns his fury on his father. He rails against Sir Gerald and wants to punish him for what he has done, and his rage curdles into self-loathing. He speaks of killing Sir Gerald, and the violence in his voice is not idle. Kate, terrified of where this is heading, begs him not to act. She wants to keep him alive, and in her desperation she admits she does not regret their night together. The admission costs her something, but she gives it freely to hold him back from the edge.

Harry responds that he wishes he were dead. He wants escape from the shame, and he says so plainly. Kate forces him to swear he will not take his own life, and he promises. But the promise is hollow in a way she cannot yet see: no sooner has he given his word than he decides to join the army, hoping to die in war. He has found a way to keep his oath and still seek his own destruction.

That evening Kate refuses dinner and lies alone in her room, trying to escape her grief. She thinks of Bella and realizes she cannot follow her example of suicide. Instead she turns the past over in her mind, examining Sir Gerald's behavior, looking for someone to blame. She decides he was weak and selfish for hiding the truth, and that judgment gives her something to hold onto. She struggles with her love for Harry, trying to reconcile her desire with her shame, and finds she cannot regret their intimacy. The night they shared is still hers, in spite of everything.

A Decision at Dawn

Overnight Kate resolves to leave Brockmere. She decides to become a nurse, a plan that offers distance from the scandal and a life of her own making. In the morning she tells Lady Selina she is leaving to train as a nurse and asks for the car to the station. Lady Selina offers her a place to stay, but Kate rejects it. The house is no longer her home.

Kate then confronts Lady Selina about never being liked, demanding acknowledgment of her bastard status, and accuses her of coldness. Lady Selina admits she is fond of Kate and tries to explain herself, but she refuses to reveal her private reasons for having warned her. Kate refuses to say goodbye to Sir Gerald, avoiding a painful confrontation, and leaves Lady Selina with only a bitter promise to perhaps write. Then she goes, carrying the secret and the night with her.

Chapter 3

Rosie helps Kate pack, and while they work she lets slip the truth Kate keeps circling: Sir Gerald is Maggie's lover. The confirmation hits hard and sharpens Kate's disgust with the father she just found. Kate promises to keep Rosie's secret, trading her silence for the truth and closing off any further inquiry into Maggie's affair. The bargain shuts the matter for good.

Kate leaves Brockmere in the car carrying a solved mystery, yet the answer brings no relief. She feels more isolated and bitter than before. She thinks about how Sir Gerald let down both Maggie and her mother. She recalls the serious-eyed man in her mother's photograph, wishing he had been her father and rejecting the man she must now call father. Her condemnation turns to her mother, who deceives her husband and lies to her only child; Kate demands truth only in memory, since her mother is dead. She concludes her parents destroyed her life between them.